The Bargaining (32 page)

The thought of Miller's anguish over his brother brings a fresh wave of tears to my eyes, and through my blurred vision, I almost bypass the fork that leads me to the Carver House. Lightning starts to backlight the clouds, and I know it's only a matter of time before the sky opens up and these dirt roads turn muddy and treacherous. I hadn't heard it was going to storm tonight, but given my exile in the land without Internet, I'm not sure how I would have heard.

The next flash of lightning blinds me for just a second, and when I regain my sight, I slam the brakes so hard, I hit my head on the steering wheel.

“Oh my God, no. No no no!” I pant from behind the dash.

I don't think I hit him. I didn't feel the car hit anything at all.
I couldn't have hit him. They came out of nowhere. Where did they come from? Where—?

My mind is moving faster than my pounding head can keep up. I fling the jeep's door open anyway, buckling under the pain in my skull. I stumble to the hood, cringing against the memory of what I saw right before I slammed on the brakes. Right before the lightning cleared and the road became visible again. Two boys, one in the middle of the road, enormous eyes, wide and starving. Mouths opened in silent screams.

But the boy who was in the road is not lying on the ground. The other is nowhere to be seen, either. I crouch and check underneath the car, but all I see is a mass of pine needles and a large gouge in the road.

I hear a twig snap beside me and spin too fast, pain crashing behind my eyes. I see the bend of a branch, the flutter of needles.

Lightning dances behind the clouds. The first tap of a raindrop hits the ground, then another. Soon, a light pattering begins. I'm getting wet, but I don't feel a thing.

A pinecone pops, the crunch of it collapsing underneath the weight of someone's foot.

The dense air is doing all it can to stave off the imminent downpour. Drops continue to fall in that light patter, but the
otherwise quiet of the woods has me feeling the need to get back in the car immediately. There was no boy in the road. My mind was playing an evil trick on me.

Then I hear the song, clear and even on immature vocal cords. And it's close.

The tone of the song drops, the octave far too low to come from a child's mouth. And then it laughs that horrible, gurgling laughter that burbles from the depths of an ancient throat.

The next flash of lightning precedes a deafening crack of thunder, and the sky splits open to release the downpour it's been threatening.

I can no longer hear the laughter, but I don't need to hear it to know it's too close to be safe. I squint against the gush of rain and throw the driver's side door open, soaked by the time I heave it shut and start the engine.

24

W
HEN
I
FINALLY PULL UP
to the Carver House, I barely remember to turn off the car before falling through the front door.

“April!”

I'm answered by a loud slam upstairs. Then another.

“April!”

I fly up the steps and find April pulling the windows shut in the twin bedrooms.

“Get yours and the one at the end of the hall!” she yells. “I've got the rest!”

I follow orders, shocked at my own relief seeing her safe. I hadn't realized I was as afraid for her as I was.

“We're closed up downstairs,” April says, brushing her
bangs off her forehead. Her cheeks are dusted with rain spray. I've never seen her look younger, and a renewed sense of responsibility for both our safety leaves me feeling more panicked than ever.

“We need to go,” I say, not yet prepared to explain my mania.

“That was the idea, wasn't it?”

“We're not safe here,” I say, knowing I'm just repeating myself now. But the sound of that singing from the woods is still fresh in my ear.

“Yeah, well, we're going to have to stick it out through the night,” April says, shaking out the dampness in her hair.

“April, we've got to leave tonight!”

“It's too late!” she says, throwing her hands in the air. “We missed our chance! The rain's already turned the roads to sludge.”

I know she's right. I could feel the jeep slipping all over the road. I was lucky just to make it back. And with the windows shut against the outside, some of my earlier panic subsides, and I follow April into the room that's never really felt like mine, but I can't sit still, so I pace in front of her while she chews her nails. She doesn't say anything, so I feel like I should, even though all I want to do is sprint out of here.

“I don't think you could have known everything you were getting into with this house,” I say, easing into what I should tell her. About the North Woods. The kids who were exchanged for the ones who were actually wanted. Why nobody but Miller would voluntarily revisit a place with such a brutal history. But she doesn't seem to follow, not that she could.

“I just thought I had this one right,” she says, staring at the fingernails she's nibbled to jagged stubs. “It was going to be my thing. My winning project.” When she looks up at me, I know she's not just talking about the house. She never was. She's talking about me, too. I stop my pacing.

I shake my head. “It's not about you,” I say.

“I know. Objectively, I know. I just thought with enough of the right attention, I could build it back up.”

I stare at her hands with their rough nails. April's so free-spirited with her easy laugh. But there are jagged edges to her, and sometimes she gets it wrong, and inside, I think there's not much more than some weak glue holding her together, too.

“I think sometimes it's more of a tear-down project,” I say, leveraging a real estate term I think I heard her use once.

She smiles a watery smile, knowing she's failed and trying to be okay with it. “So I'm just supposed to watch the whole thing come crumbling down?”

“No,” I say. “You're supposed to hand me the controls to the wrecking ball. It's mine to rip apart and rebuild.”

We're quiet for a minute. All I can hear is the branch outside my window thrumming its tree fingers on the pane. It takes all I have not to throw the window open to see if there's an actual hand attached to those spindly branches.

Following my gaze, April says, “I think we'll be fine until the storm lets up. We'll leave first thing in the morning.”

“And you're sure we can't try—”

She laughs, not hearing me, and only the tiniest hint of humor lights her voice. “The engineer did let one thing slip. The last electrician who worked on the house said the wiring's hanging by a thread. Comforting, huh? We've basically been living on top of a tinder box for the last month. So much for ‘minor electrical issues.'”

She shakes her head against my last question. “Those roads are going to be murder, and my old jeep's needed new tires for about a year now. I don't trust it in all that mud. We could wind up on the side of the road.”

The thought of having to walk back to the house if we got stranded—the woods all around us—is enough to make my hands start their trembling again. But the recollection of the road—of what happened
on
it—terrifies me just as much.

“But April—”

“We'll be fine for tonight,” she repeats, and I get the sense it's more for her reassurance than for mine. “Let's just try to use as little electricity as possible.”

“Great,” I say. Because spending one more night in this house—one dark night—feels like a living nightmare. But the knowledge that we'll be leaving first thing in the morning sustains me. Which must be apparent on my face, because April pats my knee in a move that feels far too old for her before she stands to leave.

She turns one more time in the doorway, but only offers me a hint of a smile before walking away, apparently deciding she's already said more than she intended to say.

I text Rob back, his “Good” still hanging there in the conversation ether.

Make that tomorrow morning.

When I don't get a response, I know it's either because the last ounce of cell service has swept away with the storm or Rob's worried. Either way, there's no point in saying more.

April and I don't eat dinner. Neither of us even brings it up. After April goes downstairs, I stay in the middle room for the rest of the night packing the Rubbermaid, placing Troy the Miraculous Pink Unicorn delicately beside Linda, only venturing outside long enough to drop the box into the jeep with the rest of the boxes before hurrying back into the
house. I can hear April moving around downstairs, doing the same. I know I should go down and help her, but there's one more thing I want to do. I take the notepad and pen from my bag—the only thing I haven't packed—and start writing.

Dear Rae,

I start and stop writing five times. I line through each new sentence as I listen to the rain attack the windows of the Carver House.

I allow one voice from the past few days to remain in my head, unquieted because it's the only one that's actually helped.

April's.

And after I've just about given up on my last letter to Rae, I finally understand what it is I want to tell her.

I don't regret you.

Because there's so much to regret, but ultimately, it wasn't her.

I close the notepad gingerly and set it on top of my bag. Then I tour the upstairs of the house, double-checking each window to be sure it's locked. I snug each latch tighter into place, pulling the curtains of the windows that have them. Not that this offers any additional security, but somehow it still makes me feel a little better. The storm hasn't gotten worse, and I think that we might be fine tonight. I make
myself feel the peace that's taken hold after my talk with April. After my final good-bye to Rae.

I tell myself there's nothing out there that can get in here. Not tonight. Because tonight, I know that when we wake up tomorrow, all we have to do is leave, and it'll be over.

“Now I know how to let you go,” I say to Rae, but it's meant for any ears listening now.

The room at the end of the hall is stuffier than the rest. Of all of them, this room needs its window open the most, but I don't dare. Instead, I lean against the door frame and survey the room's contents, piled neatly against the walls but never cleaned through, never discarded like they should have been.

I eye the canister on the floor on top of the plastic tarp, the primer April rolled across all the walls but one. The room still smells faintly of paint. I let my gaze travel to the place it always does, to the boy on the wall. Danny.

He stares in his usual direction—the closet across the room. I look like I always do, bracing for what I might find this time. But tonight, there's nothing except the little box of matches, which I pick up now and rattle in my hand.

I cross the room to look Danny straight in the eye. This time, as he stares back at me, I think that maybe I don't see anything at all. For the first time, it's nothing but paint on the wall.

I pick up the roller, pry the canister open, and dip the
sponge cylinder into the paint. I hesitate for a moment, then before I can stop my hand, I'm bringing the roller to the wall and pressing into the farthest corner of the North Woods depicted in the mural.

“Whatever happened to you out here,” I tell him, “it needs to end now.”

Even though I'm doing exactly what Miller has been trying so desperately to do, this is different. I don't intend to paint a single thing over this white canvas.

I press the roller as hard as I can into the wall, paint dripping down the plaster in milky streams. I roll large swipes of nothingness across the mural. I erase the North Woods and the tiny shed. I erase Danny's empty hands. I cover his crooked smile and his singed hair. And with a fresh dip into the bucket of primer, I look down to blot the excess paint from the sponge. When I return to the mural, I see that I've left his eyes for last.

“Don't look,” I tell him, and I run the roller over his pine green irises, tucking him into the forever night of a wall covered in glistening white paint.

I survey my work from the doorway, enjoying the sight of absolutely nothing on the wall. It looks like a barren desert.

Back in the middle room, I find the letter to Rae right where I left it.

I try to think of something to say to her, too, but I know I've already done that. I've been screaming in silence for nine months.

So I take one of the two remaining matchsticks from The Washingtonian box and drag the red end across its edge. I hold the corner of the notepad up to the flame and think about the match's hungry orange mouth devouring the paper. But just before it does, I extinguish the flame and slide the box with its lonely matchstick into the pocket of my jeans.

“Not yet,” I say to the notepad. I've let enough walls ­crumble for one night. I need this last one to stand. Just to get me through the night.

I sit for a long time on the mattress, listening to the tree's fingers toy with me on the glass. I lie down before I'm aware that I've moved. Sleep takes me over, one that skims the surface of comfort, drifting along the tenuous space between waking and dreaming.

And in that in-between place, I hum along to the sound of a familiar tune, drifting to me from somewhere so close I can hear the breath behind it.

25

H
OT WAVES LICK THE SIDE
of my face, a stilted rhythm of thick, warm air.

The snap and pop of a bonfire beats its song in the background, and I look for Rae. Paces away from the fire are the guys I don't know with the girls I only know a little bit, most of them passed out on sleeping bags and blankets stolen from their parents' linen closets. These kids have parents who keep blankets neatly folded in hallway closets. These kids are not like Rae and me.